A victim spirit is one of bitterness, resentment, and delusion. It is the spirit that inhabits Cain when he refuses to repent after the murder of Abel. Instead of taking responsibility for his actions, picking up the cross, counting his costs, and paying his price he curses God and decides God is unjust in all his ways.
There are no victims in this world, there are people who live righteously and enjoy the presence of God as a result and people who walk the much broader path that leads to destruction. Everyone practices faith to some degree whether it be faith in God, faith in the universe, science, themselves, or maybe even a significant other.
But everyone has faith in something, and that thing becomes their God. Their focus of worship, their devotion, their safe place. They walk the earth aimlessly, with little to no understanding of what is really going on, so they must rest on something that is greater to themselves that they can sacrifice to. When that god fails them, the foundation cracks, and they slip through they are once again alone and left to wander the world aimlessly and anxiety-ridden just like Cain.
It’s not worth arguing with people about if people believe, rather what they believe in. They actively engage in worship, it’s about seeing whether their sacrifices to that God are truly rewarding? If that God really hears you, is listening, or even exists? Yahweh rewards Elijah’s sincere worship with fire from heaven, and Baal answers his 450 prophets with silence. How is your self-idolizing and self-isolating worship treating you? You have faith in yourself, you offer yourself sacrifices and pray to the gods of discipline and self-improvement that you would dictate your own future and outcomes.
Perhaps the victim is worshipping the wrong god, they feel as if all of their offerings have been rejected because the god they worship and sacrifice to is dead, or this god doesn’t have the capacity to truly save them. There is one God who saves, who can bear the whole burden.
So I speak here to the victim, the bitter, the resentful, to Cain. We worship Yahweh because he listens and because he is inherently good, because he accepts repentance and offers forgiveness where there is naivety, and because he lives. He never fails, people fail, our understanding of him fails, his ambassadors fail, but Christ never fails.
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